To make his point he held up the front page from that morning’s edition. The headline read Democrats, Students, Foreign Allies Face Reality Of Trump Presidency:

“Their headline is not ‘Disaffected Americans Have A Champion Going To The White House’ or ‘The Country Votes For Fundamental Change.’ The headline is about how disappointed the friends of the people who run The New York Times are about what happened,” Halperin said.

“It’s amazing.” “It’s The Onion.”

Media Bias

Back in August NYT media columnist Jim Rutenberg sort of defended media bias saying, “Trump is testing the norms of objectivity in journalism.”

So, they seem to know what they’re doing.

For example, here’s a column by Will Rahn at CBS News titled The Unbearable Smugness of the Press.

Joe Scarborough dinged the media for freaking out over Trump’s refusal to accept the results of the election. But after spending the week saying the election is rigged what else would you expect him say?

Rigged Election

Trump later joked that he’ll definitely accept the rigged election results if he wins:

“I will accept a clear election result,” Trump allowed. “But I would also reserve my right to contest or file a legal challenge in the case of a questionable result.” He cited the landmark 2000 Supreme Court case Bush v. Gore as precedent for needing to contest an election.

Thrill of Victory

The Cleveland Indians won the American league pennant, shutting out the Toronto Blue Jays 3-0. Rookie Ryan Merritt went 4 1/3 scoreless innings in his second major league start.

Merritt got the nod because starting pitcher Trevor Bauer was the victim of a drone strike. A strike of his own drone. Bauer has always done things his own way, and this came as no surprise to anyone around here. So they sewed up his finger and sent him out to the mound for game three.

Bauer’s a gamer, but his sutured pinkie opened up like the elevator doors in The Shining. He never made it out of the first inning. No problem. Mad Manager Tito Franco stitched together a bullpen game and the Tribe won 4-2.

Back to Ryan Merritt, hero of Northeast Ohio. Someone found out he’s getting married, so fans bought everything on his wedding registry. But you could still get him a pillow last I checked.

Agony of Debate

Unfortunately all good things come to an an end and the final presidential debate was about to begin.

Moderator Mike Wallace asked about Supreme Court nominees. Hillary Clinton said the court should stand up for women and transgender bathrooms but not late term babies about to be aborted. She also said the court should overturn Citizen’s United (a Supreme Court case that said it’s okay for a company to make a movie critical of Hillary).

A common thread among the elite media seems to be that Trump is so bad anything goes to stop him. Which is interesting, since The Donald brags that his electoral success so far comes from free media coverage.

Howard Kurtz picked up on the NeverTrump media movement in his August 9 Media Buzz column titled Media justify anti-Trump bias, claim he’s too dangerous for normal rules.Howie says some in the media “are flat-out making the case for unfairness—an unprecedented approach for an unprecedented campaign.”:

Liberal investigative journalist Glenn Greenwald recently told Slate that “the U.S. media is essentially 100 percent united, vehemently, against Trump, and preventing him from being elected president”…

Now comes Jim Rutenberg , in his first season as media columnist for the New York Times. He’s a good reporter and I give him credit for trying to openly grapple with this bizarre situation.

But Rutenberg is, in my view, trying to defend the indefensible:

“If you view a Trump presidency as something that’s potentially dangerous, then your reporting is going to reflect that. You would move closer than you’ve ever been to being oppositional. That’s uncomfortable and uncharted territory for every mainstream, nonopinion journalist I’ve ever known, and by normal standards, untenable.”

Then there’s Michael Goodwin in this New York Post column titled American Journalism Collapsing before our eyes:

The largest broadcast networks — CBS, NBC and ABC — and major newspapers like the New York Times and Washington Post have jettisoned all pretense of fair play. Their fierce determination to keep Trump out of the Oval Office has no precedent.

The media somehow outdid their propaganda work for Barack Obama and have signed on as unapologetic auxiliaries to the Hillary Clinton campaign — and openly brag that, in Trump’s case, the duty of a journalist is to be biased.

NeverTrump Media

Conor Friedersdorf in The Atlantic isn’t having it. He explains why it’s difficult to cover Trump. Trump says provocative things like “Obama founded ISIS”. That’s not literally true – you can look it up. So what did Trump mean by it? That answer involves judgement and interpretation:

His strategic gambit was always and precisely to have things both ways.

By insisting that Barack Hussein Obama “founded” ISIS, knowing full well that his use of the word was unusual, inapt, and likely to mislead, then doubling down again and again when asked to clarify, Trump—who began in national politics by questioning Obama’s birth certificate—could again appeal to the part of his base that believes America is led by a secret Muslim foreigner who is allied with America’s Islamist enemies. And as even Trump acknowledged at the end of his interview with Hewitt, Trump willfully chose less accurate, more outrageous words to generate attention.

Having deliberately provoked with the repeated false statement that Obama founded ISIS, and deliberately inflamed with his reluctance to say he was speaking figuratively when asked to clarify, one Trump objective was achieved; having had things one way, he could move on to pretending, at the end of his Hewitt statement, that he was really just saying Obama had lost the peace all along, though he had directly rejected that notion moments earlier when Hewitt presented it.

Then, the next day, Trump sent out a Tweet with yet another contradictory explanation: He didn’t literally think Obama was the founder of ISIS; nor was he simply trying to express that Obama’s policies gave rise to ISIS; rather, when he said Obama founded ISIS, he was being “sarcastic,” but the media doesn’t get sarcasm.

All this deliberate, mendacious gamesmanship puts journalists in a very tricky position. If they merely report what Trump literally says, they’re accused of hyper-literalism. If they report what he reallymeans, judgment and interpretation are required.

Trump the Gardener

Another rich guy with “rice pudding between the ears” comes to mind. Maybe Trump is really Chance the Gardener (Peter Sellers character in the 1979 movie Being There):

President “Bobby”: Mr. Gardner, do you agree with Ben, or do you think that we can stimulate growth through temporary incentives?

[Long pause]

Chance the Gardener: As long as the roots are not severed, all is well. And all will be well in the garden.

President “Bobby”: In the garden.

Chance the Gardener: Yes. In the garden, growth has it seasons. First comes spring and summer, but then we have fall and winter. And then we get spring and summer again.

President “Bobby”: Spring and summer.

Chance the Gardener: Yes.

President “Bobby”: Then fall and winter.

Chance the Gardener: Yes.

Benjamin Rand: I think what our insightful young friend is saying is that we welcome the inevitable seasons of nature, but we’re upset by the seasons of our economy.

Chance the Gardener: Yes! There will be growth in the spring!

Benjamin Rand: Hmm!

Chance the Gardener: Hmm!

President “Bobby”: Hm. Well, Mr. Gardner, I must admit that is one of the most refreshing and optimistic statements I’ve heard in a very, very long time.

[Benjamin Rand applauds]

President “Bobby”: I admire your good, solid sense. That’s precisely what we lack on Capitol Hill.